Ask HN: Which mailing lists would you recommend to subscribe to? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Which mailing lists would you recommend to subscribe to?

108 pointsjakobdabo41 comments

I am interested in genuinely interesting lists covering any and all topics, be it post-quantum cryptography or vegan cooking.

Please include at least a brief description alongside your suggested lists.

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NANOG North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) a mailing list for discussion of large scale network operations. There are other regional lists that may be more appropriate for people (APOPS, AfNOG, SANOG, PacNOG, SAFNOG TZNOG, MENOG, BJNOG, SDNOG, CMNOG, LACNOG)

https://archive.nanog.org/list/archives

TZdb -- Time Zone database list: "discusses proposals for updates to the Time Zone Database and associated code (Internet RFC 6557). Common topics include news of changes to daylight saving time rules or to time zone boundaries."

It sounds kind of dry but it's an interesting combination of technical and social problem solving.

https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/tz

ByteByteGo https://blog.bytebytego.com/

A ton of explanations of various software design patterns, architectures, deep explanations of things a lot of developers will only understand at a higher level like HTTPS, proxies, SQL, how live streaming works, how credit card payments work. It's a fountain of knowledge.

Enjoying this, thanks for the suggestion. I like the quick and to the point posts on relevant topics.

The classic metzdowd cryptography list is generally good reading: https://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography

Another good fly-on-the-wall place to see what's going on in a specific tech niche is the dns-oarc operations list: https://lists.dns-oarc.net/mailman/listinfo/dns-operations

Seconded for Metzdowd, often very interesting.

Anything from the IETF is going to be educational for the relevant tech topic: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/

I like Peter Zeihan's list for geopolitics: https://zeihan.com/newsletter/

The Diff is good for a broad swathe of tech/finance topics: https://www.thediff.co/

I enjoy Bits About Money, from Patio11: https://bam.kalzumeus.com/ (though the essays usually make their way to HN).

Are you asking about newsletters or mailing lists? It seems that most people are posting their favorite newsletters.

Newsletter: 1 to many

Mailing list: many to many

I was asking about mailing lists, but even so, people who are posting interesting newsletters are also very welcome.

BTW, thank you everyone who posted (or is going to post) an answer. There are many great suggestions!

I know you asked specifically about mailing lists, then most answers, including mine below, are more newsletters, but if you want a mailing-list type feel, there are also Patreon, Reddit, individual blogs, and other communities that communicate in much the same way and have the same sort of interesting mailing-list feel, with similar volumes. Not sure how much you'd considered those, but a lot of the Reddits I'm in would have been mailing lists/usenet topics pre-Reddit,

Even some public Slack and Discord servers have the same mailing-list feel. eg. I'm in the monitoring.love Slack with a monitoring/SRE focus, and the r9y.dev Discord which is Reliability/SRE/Monitoring focused, and both have the same mailing list type feel.

Consider the Handmade conference newsletter [0]. We're an indie conference focused on low-level programming (nuts and bolts kind of thing) and we occasionally send interesting emails on these topics. Of course we also announce ticket sales and all that, but sparingly :)

[0] https://handmade-seattle.com/newsletter

We've already had so many newsletter Ask HNs, I'd really like to see more about mailing lists today.

Alas, people are already posting blogs in this thread (so they haven't fallen for the newsletter/mailing list confusion, but are just posting whatever they'd like to push).

Indeed, that's mostly why I was asking. Mailing lists would be a bit more novel topic.

Thanks jakobdabo, I asked the same question a couple months back but it didn't get any traction. :)

* nettime <https://nettime.org/info.html> -- discussing the intersections of art, technology, and politics

* SIMSOC <https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=simsoc> -- an academic list focused on social simulation, agent-based models, etc. There are loads more great academic lists on JISCmail as well :)

* ukdemocracyforum <https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/ukdemocracyforum> -- run by the UK Centre for Democracy, where the weekly UK Democracy Bulletin is also posted

The Orbital Index [https://orbitalindex.com] for space related stuff.

The Prepared [https://theprepared.org/] for engineering discussions.

The Convivial Society [https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com] for discussions about technology and societies intersections, and the good life, with a focus on the works of Ivan Illich.

I'm quite enjoying 8Bit News, which deliver articles about... 8Bit retro computing: https://8bitnews.io

Gergely Orosz's Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter for all aspects related to Tech career: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/

* Hacker News Daily. If you want to focus on the most upvoted submission on HN daily, I will recommend to subscribe this. It also provides mailing lists for Show HN and Ask HN on weekly basis. This is helpful when you don't have enough time to spend on Hacker News.

https://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/

https://www.daemonology.net/hn-weekly-show/

https://www.daemonology.net/hn-weekly-ask/

* Quastor. I recommend this to people (not only software engineer) who are interested in software engineering. The mailing list contains engineering blog and technical deep dives from various tech companies. It contains FAANG interview questions sometimes.

https://www.quastor.org

* Hacker News Books. A mailing list of the most mentioned books on Hacker News. The mailing list is available on weekly basis. Maybe this is worth to subscribe for those who are looking for books to read.

https://hackernewsbooks.com

I like the Daily Dad - to the point, fun and helpful. I grew up without a father and every little bit helps with 2 young kids during these times.

Sentiers.

“Understand the world, imagine better futures

Each issue features a carefully curated selection of articles with thoughtful commentary on technology, society, culture, and potential futures.”

https://sentiers.media/

https://www.jendrikillner.com/tags/weekly - Graphics Programming weekly

https://halisavakis.com/category/technically-art - Technically Art weekly

https://us17.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=ac8ab0580c321574fe... - Blender Guru Newsletter

https://twitter.com/search?q=Creative%20Code%20News%20(from%... - Creative Code News

rarely:

https://tympanus.net/codrops/collective - Codrops - web design news, resources

https://speckyboy.com/?s=Weekly+News - Speckyboy - designers news

https://kerkour.com/tags/newsletter - Kerkour - favorite links

https://habr-com.translate.goog/ru/search/?q=%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0... - habr ru - various technical weekly news

bookmarked:

https://www.datascienceweekly.org/newsletters - Data Science Weekly

https://this-week-in-rust.org - This Week in Rust

https://www.fightaging.org/archives - Fight Aging

I run a free weekly writing newsletter that I would recommend!

There is some short fiction, but most of the issues are about writing itself. Eg, a series of posts on “rhythm” in fiction.

If anyone is studying writing and would find that interesting, here’s a link to a sample!

https://barbariangrunge.substack.com/p/the-use-of-language-i...

Extra super full disclosure: it’s my newsletter.

(shameless plug)

if you are interested in Ruby (and Rails but also other web frameworks) - I am curating a weekly newsletter that contains mostly Ruby code samples shared by people online.

https://newsletter.shortruby.com

I try to make it simple to read and focused mainly on code samples. But I include there Ruby podcasts, videos, books but also programming related topics.

https://productivegrowth.substack.com/

For productivity, personal growth and process building. Basically all things to help make you 1% better every day and a few things about management

https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/

For all things product management

Matt Levine's Money Stuff: https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters/money-stuff

Came here to say this lol. On point financial news analysis with a strong dollop of humor. Worth it just for the Elon musk commentary

I'm working on a paid newsletter called Remote Leaf[1], on which we are curating a good number of remote jobs from 60+ sources and sending you a personalised list that matches based on your location and skills.

[1] - https://remoteleaf.com

Full disclosure: I'm the founder of this newsletter.

Check out the following

https://www.pythonweekly.com/

https://www.programmerweekly.com/

http://www.founderweekly.com/

Here's the list of the tech and creator newsletters I subscribe to, I recommend all of them (each entry has a short description): https://journal.paoloamoroso.com/my-favorite-tech-and-creato...

"10x your mind" is a newsletter that I write:

https://prachinain.substack.com/p/can-we-delay-mental-aging

It provides insights on how our brain works along with actionable tips on food, lifestyle, and decision making.

As someone who is interested in Scheme I'm subscribed to the Gauche and GNU Guile user and devel mailing lists.

If there are particular programming languages that interest you it would probably be a good idea to seek out relevant mailing lists.

https://magur.news/ - weekly links on noteworthy design, and development news and products

Full Point is fun and random: https://fullpoint.substack.com/

Excellent: https://stratechery.com/

Since no one has mentioned it yet: Net Interest has some good insight into finance industry.

Some of the ones I follow:

- Mr. Money Mustache for financial independence and lifestyle: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

- Quastor for large-scale engineering: https://www.quastor.org/

- Krebs for IT security: https://krebsonsecurity.com/

- Lenny's newsletter for product development: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/

- Psychotactics for marketing: https://www.psychotactics.com/

- CTO craft for CTOs: https://ctocraft.com/

- AI and Machine Learning: https://aiweekly.co/

- Programming news: https://www.programmerweekly.com/

- Startups and tech: https://tldr.tech/

- IT engineering trends: https://www.infoq.com/

- For startup founders: http://www.founderweekly.com/

Non-tech:

* The Beet, by Eilish Hart, about Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/10/03/suing-gorbachev

* Tomorrow Will Be Worse, by Julia Ioffe, about what's going on in Washington D.C. https://puck.news/newsletter_content/the-ghost-of-william-f-...

* Faridaily, by Farida Rustamova, about what's going on in Putin's Russia https://faridaily.substack.com/p/putin-always-chooses-escala...

podcastnotes.org has a popular weekly mailer that summarizes interesting ideas from recent podcast episodes. (Disclaimer: I'm the tech guy at PN)

This is a newsletter as opposed to a mailing list, but I came across it recently and found it interesting -- https://tldr.tech -- it's a daily email with small blurbs and links to sources covering latest science, AI/ML, programming, tech industry, etc. news!

I use Feedly / NetNewsFire for feeds, rather than newsletters, but in reality they're the same, just different consumption methods. Just interesting to see NNW was in HN recently. These are the most interesting things I keep in Feedly.

acoup.blog - A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry - frequently linked to HN already. He's a great history writer, covering everything from Roman logistics, to analysis of current games and movies - eg. LotR battles.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC364qOwWXAzgRruHhhFMhVg - Croker vs Rover. A New Zealand guy restoring a 70s Land Rover. It's a Youtube channel, but both hilarious and informative. Infrequent too, so easy to cruise through at leisure.

Atlas Obscura - https://www.atlasobscura.com/ - interesting history/geography mix.

https://www.numberphile.com/ - Mathy easy-access but complex topics - mostly videos on Youtube. Very accessible, but interesting for a mostly non-math person to see real math at work.

https://waynehale.wordpress.com/ - Wayne Hale - NASA flight controller. Interesting views and analysis of current space / incident management topics vs how it was done for the shuttle, along with some other commentary. Infrequent and interesting.

https://computer.rip/ - Deeply geekly telco / 50s-70s computer history with some cold-war fun. Pretty in-depth, and a fun read.

https://www.cringely.com/ - Cringley - weekly-monthly tech posts on bigger tech strategy with an Appleish focus. He's been around SV for years. Was early at Apple then made documentaries, was a journalist, and blogged for years,

https://mondaynote.com/ - Jean-Louie Gassee's monday musings on tech, mostly Apple. Originally Apple, then founded Be, then chairman of Palm. Been around the block in tech.

https://www.techdirt.com/ - legal analysis in a similar style to Matt Levine (who's also a must-read for finance). Funny and informative.

https://usesthis.com/ - The setup - weekly post on someone's tech setup and tools they use. "Uses This is a collection of nerdy interviews asking people from all walks of life what they use to get the job done."

Matt Levine - Bloomberg Money Stuff - already mentioned, but here as a second vote for him. Hilarious financial industry commentary.

https://monitoring.love/ - weekly tech newsletter with a focus on Monitoring/SRE type topics. Also a good Slack server if you like SRE/Monitoring stuff

BOFH - https://www.theregister.com/Author/Simon-Travaglia - the original author's currently (and for the last 20 years or so), been on The Register. Not as good as it once was, but funny, and worth the weeklyish read.

Podcastnotes.org, weekly email of the best ideas from the worlds best podcasts.

A great way to save time and accelerate learning.

It would be ethical to mention your affiliation when advertising your own product.

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